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bluesky - Re: Hi, and some comments

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: Wei Dai <weidai AT eskimo.com>
  • To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Hi, and some comments
  • Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 20:29:54 -0800


On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 06:53:26PM -0800, hal AT finney.org wrote:
> If storage and bandwidth are in sufficient supply that publication costs
> will be very low, do we really have to worry that no one will pay for
> them in Freenet? Isn't it likely that people will simply offer them
> for free, out of altruistic reasons, since it costs them very little,
> just as they now leave Napster running? I don't think that Freenet
> will necessarily lack for storage space and bandwidth even though people
> aren't paid for them.

That may be the case now, but are you sure that in the future the supply
of freely donated storage and bandwidth will always be sufficient to meet
demand? Without payment there is no easy way to attract more resources
into the system.

> As for the score-keeping role of money, Freenet proposes to use direct
> measures of popularity. While these can be manipulated, if the number
> of people who want to do so is a small percentage, the goal is that the
> network as a whole will not be too much affected. (It would be good to
> see some calculations along these lines, though.)

Popularity is only one reason to store data. Some data may not be popular
but may have high value for a small group of people or have long-term
archival value. I guess Freenet focuses on popularity because it's harder
to manipulate than subjective value, but the downside is that it can't
handle the latter kind of data. A market-based system can automatically
and optimally balance between the two.




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